Amy,

I am the only full-time staff person working in our museum.  Rome has a
population of roughly 40,000.  Our museum is only 9 years old and I've been
here 3 years.  We had a board retreat in 2000 to develop our first strategic
plan.  

In 2003, we conducted a public SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
threats) analysis of the museum in 4 1 hour sessions over the course of 4
weeks.  75 people came to the meetings.  I was very pleased.  We split the
folks up into groups (exhibits/collections/facilities, programs, finance,
and marketing).  Each group met independently.  First meeting was strengths
and weaknesses, second opp. and threats.  Third night they made
recommendations and voted on the top 10 for their group.  The last night the
group reconvened as one and voted on the top 10 out of the 40
recommendations that were presented.  One draw back is that one highly
persuasive person can skew your results by really selling their favorite.

This summer I had a marketing intern conduct a survey.  She went to the 4th
of July celebration and phone people randomly from the phonebook.  We also
plan to conduct the surveys at Rome's summer concert series and green market
on the weekends.  So far we have about 50 surveys and most of the people
don't know we exist!!!  This is good to know!

We just started our institutional MAP and are looking forward to the results
of the self-assessment.

If you're interested contact me off-list and I'll share our survey with you.
It's based on one I used as a museum science student at Texas Tech
University.

Good luck!
Katie

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Katie Anderson

Museum Director

Rome Area History Museum

305 Broad Street

Rome, GA 30161

706-235-8051

cell 678-908-7751

fax 706-235-6631

[log in to unmask]

www.RomeHistoryMuseum.com

 

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A new exhibit highlighting the efforts on the home front during WWII is now
open at the Rome Area History Museum.  "World War II: The Home Front"
contains photos and artifacts from the 1940s that tell the story of this
transformational time.  A video containing clips of oral history interviews
with local WWII veterans and civilians is on view in the exhibit.     

 

As a partner of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, we are
coordinating an oral history project with World War II veterans and
civilians in northwest Georgia.  It is vital that we preserve these stories.
Please contact the Museum to schedule interviews.  

 

The oral history project and exhibit are supported in part by a grant from
the Georgia Humanities Council.  

 

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-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Amy Cunningham
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 5:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Strategic planning- audience and community input

Hello,

Our historical society is beginning a new strategic planning process and I
would like to hear how other museums have used external feedback to inform
the process.  I am especially interested if any of you have used surveys or
questionaires to learn more about your audience (and potential audience)'s
perception of your institutional strengths and weaknesses and seek their
ideas for future endeavors.  What did you ask? How did you distribute it?

Right now, we are leaning towards using a written and web based survey to
our membership and creating another survey for the more general community. 
 The survey will not stand alone- we will be conducting some focus group
meetings and interviews with more specific sectors of our audience
(teachers, geneaologists, donors, legislators, business leaders, etc.)as
well.

We are conducting our strategic planning process mostly in-house with a
board/staff steering committee and some outside help for a retreat and other
meeting facilitation.  I would be interested to hear from any of you who
have done the same and lived to tell...

Thanks!
Amy Cunningham

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